1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to an improved data processing system, and in particular to a method and apparatus for managing information about applications and files. Still more particularly, the present invention provides a method, apparatus, and computer implemented instructions for automatically identifying files that need to be backed up using relational meta data. The list of those files is then supplied to a standard backup program using programatic functions supplied by the present invention.
2. Description of Related Art
When an application is installed on a computer system, the setup program, which is part of the application and supplied by the application supplier, registers with the operating system that the application will be creating data files of a certain file type on the file system. More specifically, the setup program tells the operating system the type of data files that will be created, edited, deleted, or otherwise manipulated by the application. Data files manipulated by the application are associated with that application as long as that application remains installed on the computer system and, providing that the file type is not changed. If the application is removed, the mapping of the file extension to the application is lost. The current state of the art is to identify the data file type with a one to three-letter filename extension. For example, the setup program for Microsoft Word registers with the operating system to indicate that filenames with the extension “.doc” are associated with Microsoft Word. Microsoft Word is a word processing program available from Microsoft Corporation. As a result, when a user selects a data file to be opened, the operating system uses the filename extension of that data file to determine which application should be launched.
Users typically install dozens of applications on a data processing system, such as editors, e-mail programs, Internet browsers, and business applications such as payroll or inventory access. Each of these applications usually creates, edits, renames, or deletes data files of a certain data type as determined by the file type extension. These data files may include user identification such as users Ids and passwords, application configuration files, reports, and data files. Currently, each application consistently creates data file types associated with an application vendor determined filename extension. For example, Microsoft Word creates document data files using the filename extension “.doc”, Lotus WordPro creates document data files using the filename extension “.1wp”, and Lotus Notes creates data files using the filename extension “.id” for userid information and “.nsf” for notes databases. Lotus Word Pro and Lotus Notes are available from Lotus Development Corporation. Each application vendor selects a unique filename extension to be used for their application and hopes that no other application vendor selects the same extension. In the case of some programs that use common types of files such as .mid or .jpg, installing another program will often incorrectly associate the data files with the newly installed application.
As the end user executes applications and works on data files, the list of data files associated with the application continually changes. Some data files may be created, others deleted or edited, and some renamed to other filenames or file type extensions. The user also may place some of these files in other places within the file system. With these types of file manipulations, the files may become hard to locate without using a tool to search the hard disk drive for filenames with a well known filename extension for a particular application. The files also may contain extensions that do not follow the recommended file naming convention. For example, the user may create a Microsoft Word document and save it with the filename extension of “.zoo” instead of the standard .doc extension.
When the user needs to backup files from a data processing system for a particular application, locating these files becomes nearly impossible. In particular, it is difficult to locate all the data files created and required by an application. The files may not be in the same place that they were originally created, and may not have the same filename or filename extension that is indirectly associated with the application. In addition, the application may create data files, such as application settings, that are not registered with the operating systems associations to applications.
For example, Lotus Notes creates a desktop.dsk file to store the layout of the applications workspace, but the file extension .dsk is not associated with Lotus Notes during the applications installation. If the user attempts to back up the data for this applications, all of the files associated with the application should also be backed up, but there is currently no way to insure that all of the data and configuration files have been located and subsequently backed up.
The user can search for all occurrences of a particular file extension, but this would be a tedious task. Even if the user finds all files with a particular extension, there is no way to be sure that all the files of that type have been located because they may have been renamed or moved to another location, such as a network share.
Existing backup programs do a satisfactory job of locating the data files associated with a particular application, but only if the files have the correct file type extension expected by the backup program. Also, the backup program will generally search only one folder or directory, and expects the data files to always be located in that directory or folder.
Therefore, it would be advantageous to have an improved method, apparatus, and computer implemented instructions for backing up files in which a user is relieved from having to search for data files associated with an application.